A Trial of Errors
by Demitria Miriam
Summary: Both Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha have always made their way in life through triumphs and losses. Battles having always determined their elation or defeat, but is that really all there will ever be to their lives? Sess x Inu in 500 words or less drabble snippets.
1. Tonight's Lover

**Tonight's Lover**

His breath was ragged as he thrust into the pliant body beneath him.

He gasped.

He moaned.

His steady thrusts turned haphazard as he lost himself before a burst of white flashed before his eyes as he came.

With a strangled grunt he collapsed onto the body below. Well-toned chests met with a sweaty slap as he inhaled the other's scent for a moment before he took notice of the life within the forest beginning to stir again upon the conclusion of his coupling. Pulling out his eyes quickly scanned the surrounding landscape. Brows drawing together he realized that dawn was fast approaching.

He stood soundly and quickly dressed himself before he turned and left not uttering a single word of his departure.

"See ya 'round," a soft voice said, mildly annoyed.

He did not turn around to acknowledge the other and kept walking at a steady, confident pace.

Only when he felt a whirl of youki burst out of nowhere from behind him did his steady pace turn into an airborne glide.

He'd almost made it far enough away to not catch the gruffer tone the voice now held as the other ended their encounter with one simple word that summed up their... affiliation:

"Asshole".

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Words: 206


	2. One Side of the Coin

**One Side of the Coin**

Not even a moment after the other came was the jerk pushing away from Inuyasha's body without a word.

"See ya 'round," Inuyasha muttered as the chill of early morning swept over his naked body.

Nothing but silence replied.

He sighed as he remained lying down in the grass, staring up at what little of the pre-dawn sky he could see through the thick foliage.

_Any time now would be great_, he thought sourly. And then as if that were the command to start the process, the familiar sweep of youki rushed through his body, awakening his dormant senses as he changed back into a hanyou.

Only a moment passed before he glanced around the landscape and caught the fluffy tail of the white beast leaving in the distance. With narrowed eyes, Inuyasha grumbled "asshole" in parting.

He dressed then, body automatically walking towards the village so he could start the morning chores.

These nights always ended the same.

He'd be lured out of his home somehow, or he'd even find himself walking the border of the town when he should have stayed safely within the boundaries of the village.

Then _He_ would come, they'd both engage in angry, taunting words, and then violence would erupt and Inuyasha would suddenly be pinned to the trunk of a tree, or pressed into the ground.

And then the rutting began and continued on through the night.

Neither said a word during the act.

An act that had occurred ever since Inuyasha reached majority.

He'd asked in the beginning, _why? Why?_ But he never received an answer, and eventually he gave up trying, and then it wasn't long before he gave up hoping for any answers at all.

All he _did_ know was that he was found on a specific night every month for the act. Sure, they ran into each other every so often during the day or any other night, yet nothing happened then.

Only on the nights of the New Moon would Sesshomaru track him down and take him with a passion, a tenderness and a violence that never gave either a moment to do anything other than simply _feel_.

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Words: 360


	3. The Other Side of the Coin

**The _Other_ Side of the Coin**

The youkai opened his eyes slowly, burnished gold glowing eerily in the darkness as he gazed at the waning crescent moon firmly held by the evening sky.

_These nights... _he thought. _They will always be the same._

During the last stages of the lunar cycle his mind and body became restless and eager with the prospect of once again drawing nearer to the moonless night. And even more so this night, for it was the last evening that the sky would embrace the waning crescent, now merely a sliver in the sky, for the rest of the month.

That very thought alone had his blood searing through his veins as his heart drummed against his chest and reverberated through his body with a powerful thrum.

The youkai sighed as he let his reservations and tensions go, engulfed instead by the sheer excitement that had built in him ever since his last encounter on the night of the New Moon...

The only night he would ever visit Inuyasha in the way he did.

For on this one night alone, once a month, the younger male was completely and wholly human. These brief nights each moon cycle were the only times he would allow himself the luxury of bedding Inuyasha to his body's content.

They were the only nights where their father's great blood was not shared between him.

They were the only ones when Inuyasha and he would not be related by any standards and his conscious and morals would not eat away at him for desiring that which a brother should never desire from someone of his own blood.

The moonless nights gave freedom and reprieve from the only sin in the world Sesshoumaru would ever go to the netherworld for.

And he would indulge in this dance of the damned for as long as he was able to.

Even if it killed him.

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Words: 314


	4. Time or Self-Restraint?

**Time or Self-Restraint?**

Dawn finally came and the moonless night was now merely half a day away.

Yet, as the morning began, time seemed to slow down.

Just when Sesshoumaru thought he would rid himself of the anxiousness when the sun finally graced the sky with its presence, a whole new level of restlessness would burn through him; if he thought the night prior to the New Moon was difficult to withstand each time, the day of the moonless night was even more difficult to endure.

However, it was always like this; time would slow between their encounters and _during_ said encounters it would gain in swiftness tenfold, as if to spite his efforts of restraint.

And suffer through it he did, time and time again; never long enough during these meetings, and always too much time in-between them.

Time.

It was something that would always be an undefeatable enemy to him. One which constantly tested his reserve and strength of keeping his desires at bay.

Sometimes he wondered who would one day lose this never-ending battle: Time, or his self-restraint?

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Words: 178


	5. A Piece to the Puzzle

**A Piece to the Puzzle**

The day had begun too soon for Inuyasha, like all of the days that closed in on the night of the New Moon. Time seemed to be too fast until his human nights and then, all of a sudden, things would instantly slow down the moment he felt Sesshoumaru's youki crawling over his skin.

Days and nights always felt that way, ever since he'd first met the youkai as a child. Back then things hadn't seemed as complicated as they did now. Though, he guessed, they never really did when you were nothing more than a runty little brat.

The half-demon remembered, vividly, when he first met the daiyoukai centuries ago, just decades before his maturity.

* * *

_Inuyasha had been human that night, and had been running from a creature that was planning on making a meal out of him. The beast was slow and fumbling miles away still, but he didn't give a shit if the thing was the slowest man-eating youkai on the island. He was human tonight, running from something that could literally eat him in one gulp, broken twigs tangling in his hair and questionable brown splotches on every part of his torn clothing... _

_And then everything stopped; thoughts scattered and legs locked up the moment he hurtled into a small clearing. Inuyasha's eyes zeroed in on the body of a person that was, by all appearances, resting idly against the trunk of a tree._

_Inuyasha should have been worrying over the fact that he wasn't moving and instead taking a moment to gaze at the angelic-looking being before him. Time stopped as his eyes slowly inspected the softly defined features the male sported, speaking of both youth and poise. _

_Inuyasha shook his head, and everything cleared as rationality came back to him. Even he, with his feeble human senses, knew better than to think the person resting before him was anything remotely close to an angel._

_It was those markings that gave the male away... Inuyasha had run into a few others with such designs etched about their skin._

_Youkai. _

_The markings were a sign of two things. The first was simply a proud, if not boastful, display that the demon had perfected their humanoid form. The second was a warning. _

_While the marks were visually appealing in both delicacy and color, the designs were essentially the sign of a predator, a hunter. The color was meant to distract prey before it was too late to notice the massive amount of power and how dangerous the one sporting the designs really was._

_Inuyasha's arms and legs trembled with that knowledge as his mind screamed, Get the hell out of here!_

_He closed his eyes, trying to catch his breath and calm his nerves. When he opened them again the ethereal male was nowhere in sight._

_However, the stench of the beast that had initially been hunting him down suddenly wrapped around him like a thick and potent miasma, a deep chuckling sounding from beyond the darkness._

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Words: 500

Note: I actually got overzealous with this chapter and had to cut it down xD So you'll see the rest of the memory, hopefully in the next chapter. If not, then this memory will be more than one chapter long! Hope you are enjoying! Thank you all for your comments, they've been keeping me inspired!


	6. Thoughtless Actions

**Thoughtless Actions**

The half-demon smirked to himself. The memory of when he'd first seen Sesshoumaru always amused him when he remembered it, mostly because it was probably the first time he'd managed to survive a moonless night thanks to his own merit. Before then, he'd cower in villages or kept to temples that had immense spiritual powers protecting them.

The half-demon fell back into the memory of when the demon he'd been staring at while slumbering had disappeared, and the giant creature that had been chasing him finally caught up.

* * *

The moment he heard that ominous laughter behind him his heart jolted into his throat, limbs trembling. Not a moment later and Inuyasha felt himself being picked up like a farmer would a mouse he found in his food storage. Inuyasha tried twisting, this way and that, but his struggles were in vain and merely twisted him to the point that he was now in full display in front of the giant's face.

Another deep, throaty chuckle swept past Inuyasha's face like heavy miasma, the repugnant smell making his stomach churn as he felt bile rising.

"Little ningen, so tasty and sweet," the lumbering giant rumbled. The creature tilted its head to the side then, as if studying what he initially thought of as a prized feast.

Instead, the thing grumbled irritably to itself, "Runt of the litter; no meat on you at all, only bones. Just bones. Hm, a snack at the least. Yes, I'll pick away your innards from between my teeth with those twigs you call limbs."

The giant moved his arm above his head to drop the small ningen into his mouth and devour him in one gulp.

Inuyasha made a sound he neither recognized as a scream nor a plead, yet it was enough to capture the ugly youkai's attention, halting his actions. The giant's grip loosened and Inuyasha shimmied out of the leathery hand before jumping into the air and bracing himself for impact against the ground below.

Inuyasha landed with a heavy OOMPH and the air was knocked out of his lungs. Recovering the next moment, he grabbed the first thing he found - a... thorny clump of flesh? - and hurled it the moment the monster spotted him, roaring in anger.

The angry roar, however, soon turned into a howling cry of pain the next moment as the monster stumbled backwards, clutching at his eye. The more the thing tried to dislodge whatever was in his eye, the worse the damage became. Finally, ripping the thorny clump of flesh off his eye and tossing it aside, the Cyclops kept crying out in pain as he stumbled this way and that, running into trees.

Inuyasha hid behind a tree, watching the creature as it turned the opposite direction. He almost took to yelling out loud and cheering, but the second his mouth opened as he turned around, his breath caught in his throat once more.

The youkai he'd been observing resting earlier was back.

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Words: 500


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